DNA soul?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Could it be that the historical reference to a, “soul” is exactly defined by the genetic sequence of traits we transcribe from our parents’?

It’s quite plain to see that, much like the idea of a soul, each person’s individual genetic pattern is responsible for the expression of that specific individual. Each person’s DNA is unique just as a soul is generally thought of as.

It also goes along with the idea that we carry the “spirits” of our ancestors in our souls’. Or in other words, perhaps, the genetic traits of our distant relatives.

2

The soul is where we live in our body. DNA is a multiple of many strands. I personally am looking for one whole entity. Although, thinking about it, all you need is for all parts to communicate with each other.

3

I’ve read semi-serious theories that the micro-fauna (symbiotic bacteria/viral material) which inhabits our intestines have a hive-mind pseudo intelligence, and communicate with eachother via prions and plastids, and can even function on a species level - communicating laterally human to human via pheremones and shed benign viral material, and that they regulate to an extent our life-spans. One giant soul for the whole of mankind…?

You can look for the soul in metaphor and bioligical comparison - but it’s a fruitless pursuit - if the soul exists - then it precedes and envelops and overflows us - trying to find it with sensory equipment, either natural or of our own making, is like an eye trying to see inside itself, or an isolated word trying to discern its own meaning - futile alone.

Patience people, a lifetime of it - all will be revealed, or not, as the case may be…

4

according to descartes, it is in the pineal gland…

-Imp

5

My goodness, Tab, your post was most excellent. I didn’t think you had it in 'ya.

I think the origins of the concept of ‘soul’ must be traced back to that simplest denominator of life, as your microbiological example of the social process of organisms as being really the sign of intelligence, rather than basing the concept on language alone as if ‘soul’ required language speakers to exist.

If our intelligence has given us language and thought- and we exist socially- but has not given microbiological organisms language and thought, as we understand that to mean, but they also exist socially- then the denominator for the concept of ‘soul’ is social capacity.

I would suspect that any organism that has a nervous system where some degree of electro-chemicle activity was present, then it would be safe to assume that it was reacting, and therefore aware, of an external environment. This places the necessary terms for ‘soul’ on the bare minimal of merely responding to something external- a would be Other.

On another note, I define consciousness hierarchically and believe that levels of complexity can be reduced or amplified, changing the operational ‘piloting’ of your own awareness, by yourself. Some drugs I have experimented with changed significantly the sense I had of myself being able to distinguish what was real without the effects of the drug, and what was a hallucination produced by internal relationships in my nervous system. Which is to say, there came a point where certain sights and sensations were very real, and the question then, for me, altered into “how does the nervous system create false sensory awareness- that is, why wouldn’t I be able to certify that the objects were not real that I experienced while experiencing them.”

I could not do this.

I then knew that it would be safe to assume that if a nervous system produces an awareness of an environment, in any degree and manner of organism, then it would also be possible for that nervous system to conflate the reality of that sensory data internally, if subjected to certain chemical or electrical influences.

An autopoietic soul?

What is the real relationship between the Cartesian spirit and the world it interacts with. Better yet, how does this happen? I think I’m gonna go immanence on this one. Why not? Everyone is doing it and its the latest fashion.

But you stated it very well, Tab. A fine place to start in an attempt to find and define the essential terms for ‘soul’ and what would be the minimal conditions for such a thing to exist. We have a tendency to make as our default setting an anthropological approach to all issues, where we measure things by our own standards. This suits us well, but is only human.

6

DNA isnt unique, as twin share it, so twins would have to share a soul.

If it is in a specific place in the body then surgery could remove your soul.

If it is a specific part of your cells, then a viral agent or genetic mutation could strip you of your soul.

7

From Tab’s post I’m getting a very Parasite Eve vibe. Replace with mitochondria and you have it.

Although, it does lend an explanation as to why if twins share dna they can communicate without visable communication. That hive mind is communicating in exactly the same way as the other (or damn close enough) so that actual trains of thought could be easily reproduced.

Interesting

8

I recall reading Herodotus and getting some insight into this.

On his tour of Egypt he found that the Egyptians considered humans to be just another animal and implied that that influenced human interaction. He reported that the Greek idea of the divine human was much better. He didn’t go into why he thought this, but it seems obvious that it would accord fellow humans a measure of respect even if said respect was based on a false premises.

So, the idea of the “soul” is most likely a fiction that was invented for social engineering purposes.

9

Hello Nientilin,

“Soul” as such is a word, symbolizing any number of ideas. However, this is what they are - ideas. All language is metaphorical, one phrase or notion building upon another.

The hope we all have, of course, is that our metaphors somehow closely correspond with reality - or perhaps that they point in the right direction.

I do believe we are “souls” - though in the end that may well just be a name for a collection of things. I do think genetic factors play a role in all of this - if temprament and all manner of tendencies can be bred into dogs, I think it’s hardly surprising that something similar occurs in human beings.

Now if one wishes to speculate on “the soul” as something separate from the body, with a life of it’s own which will live independently after the body expires…this I have trouble in accepting for the simple reason that I do not accept the whole notion of mind/body dualism - I think such a notion is a linguistic trap, a point where the conventions of language get the better of us and start dictating abstractions of the mind, rather than vice versa.

I don’t deny the possibility that the “soul” could in some sense survive death - perhaps some impression of us remains upon this universe after our demise, a phantom of sorts. Kind of like a hand-print in cement maybe? From my reading, I think there’s some anecdotal evidence of this. I guess such an idea really isn’t all that strange - we leave impressions like this in the minds of others, however partial or imperfect they may be.

Beside all of this though, I do believe there is a part of our “soul” which is imperishable - however this part is non-different from the “soul” of the Universe, the totality of all that is and can be - thus while we have this while we traverse this earth for a short while, I cannot say that we keep this after death, precisely because I do not know that “we” (all that makes us who and what we are as particular individuals) remains in tact beyond the grave. To put it all very allegorically, that part of us returns to the whole from which it came (though understood more literally, “it” never left that original wholeness to begin with, and is non-different from it.) Kind of Vedantic, I know, but this is how I (conditionally, but with reason) understand things.

10

Could you define an atom as the bare minimum for a soul to exist? Perhaps a neutron? a quark?

I had an idea that perhaps each atom was sort of a ladder out of nothingness.

The whole universe of each atom consists of a series of contradictory yet complimentary parts that allow it to fruitfully express itself in our universe. Sort of like a flower

This idea kind of relates to the superstring theory in that everything with a mass is inevitably tied down to a certain middle or collected connectiveness.

Of course, like Detrop and Tab pointed out, no idea can ever really prove the existence of a soul specifically. Yet I believe there are good reasons to actively pursue instances in which our senses direct our attention towards the light of similar phenomena.

As The Alderian pointed out even posing with a certain attitude towards the concept of the self/soul might in his words “accord fellow humans.”

11

The underpinnings of the idea ‘soul’ are found in a sort of rational intuition and curiosity. The real question an intelligence is pondering is this:

Why wouldn’t the universe be simpler if it was so old, and composed of simple elements and enerigies. And why wouldn’t a stability be reached where there was little to no activity at all.

This question is answered with the big-bang hypothesis. Now, we assume that the universe will reach such a point, but has only recently come into existence, and there is much time to pass before it happens.

The the question changes to:

Well, why the universe at all, then.

Either of the two routes brings intelligence to a kind of teleological intuition, and the question, in its many forms, is only: “what and why is the animating force of the universe.”

This is an ontological and causal question. Two categories inferred by rationality. ‘Soul’ then represents “Being” and “Necessity” and determination- a “Will” to organization and endurance. Which is to say that we do not limit the definition of ‘soul’ to that which is intelligent, but now, rationally, we have reduced soul to systematic and dynamic repetitious patterns. It is the antithetical to the rule of entropy.

Either the only apparent purpose of the universe is to continue expanding, without the intention of collapsing, or it was designed teleologically to end, or, on a grander scale of things, pass on after its necessary contribution to a bigger pattern.

The ‘soul’ is not a question of what or who has it but instead it is really an awe-struck fascination with the fact that there IS the universe.

The anthropological position is that the Mind was a necessary and determined feature of the universe, or else the question couldn’t be asked.

I see at the offset not the quantity of life as something significant, but rather the operant conditions of it and how complex and repetitious it is in functioning. It is almost as if one could say that a particle is ‘alive’ and has a soul if it is either composed of, or composing itself, some kind of enduring influence on something else. I imagine that eventually the universe will reach a constant temperature and freeze, only to be sucked into and end-less cosmic junkyard of black-holes, what was once an enthusiastic party of elements and momentums and wave lengths and stuff.

But the soul has gotta be the motion in the lotion.

Four-hundred years is but a minute of development for the Zeitgeist. The world spirit is one organism using the substance of the universe to manifest itself so to watch 700 club episodes and eat beef jerky.

Look for the dynamics and the long term materialistic features of economic progress and the individual health of all people, if you want to measure the amplification of the ‘soul’ in a species’ entire social setting; its power and creativity in forever expanding contexts.

When the music starts sucking and people become fat, the first signs of decline are present and one should jump ship, climb the mountain, and take residence with Zarathustra, and Yoda, if they are splitting the rent.

Schopenhauer once arranged a dialogue between the World Spirit and a Human Being. After a few exchanges, the World Spirit had the Human Being convinced that the point of the world was to not want it, and that was the great lesson.

The birthings of nihilism, dualism, and the great cosmic ‘tilt.’ Man became suspicious and his ‘soul.’

He took on too much weight. He became serious. He invented laughter. He worried over death. He expected too much. He didn’t expect enough. It was all wrong for several centuries- the world was only a pit-stop of some sort which was to be transcended if anything.

But what else could there possibly be!?

Okay, you’re a spirit. There you are in the spirit lounge, like Beetle-Juice with your ticket, waiting to either be evaluated of given an assignment, or “life-package” where you are invited to live a life somewhere for some reason you find agreeable…for a low low price.

You’re chillin’ there in the lobby with the others talking about how cool the universe is and what life is like. You’re number gets called, and you get the package deal. Again you are born and again you join a philosophy forum and make posts like this.

“The God’s were bored, so they created man.”- Kierkegaard.

Ironically that is a relief. Why? Because it is opiatic (that’s one of my new words) of that seriousness which seized the Romantic movement into secret nihilism.

Even immortality gets mundane and usual, so death is no great loss.